Month: January 2011

Imminent Foodie-Tree Hugger Alliance!

We often speak of mitigating climate change in light of how much can we afford to reduce consumption, thus leading some foodies to reject environmental values.  A classic in this genre occurs right here in Los Angeles, where Heal the Bay’s executive director, Mark Gold, spends his time trying to save sea creatures, and his …

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Obama’s 80% “Clean” Energy Goal: Ambitious or Inevitable?

In a recent post on Grist, Keith Schneider found President Obama’s 80% “clean” energy goal rather incredible: Arguably the central provision of President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was the proposal to generate 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 — including nuclear energy and “carbon capture and …

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Can Obama’s Car Emissions Deal Work for Utilities?

Politico ran a little noticed article last week suggesting that the nation’s utilities are exploring whether they can cut a deal with the Obama Administration to regulate their greenhouse gas emissions.   The idea is to model a deal after the plan the car companies entered into with the Obama Administration to extend California’s car …

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Legal Planet Nomination

Legal Planet has been nominated as one of the top fifty environmental blogs.  To find out more and learn how to have input into nomination process and vote on the final selections, please go to the Lexis-Nexis website. We’re very pleased to have made the initial list, given Lexis-Nexis’s standards: For the first time, this …

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Good for Consumers, Good for the Planet?

California Governor Jerry Brown’s appointment of Mike Florio, a well-known, life-long consumer advocate, to a seat on the California Public Utilities Commission raises an interesting question for those who view the world primarily through green-colored glasses.  What does a consumer advocate have to offer toward the advancement of an environmental agenda – at least in …

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California Environmental Blueprint: Environmental monitoring & modeling

This post is the second in our ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California. In our Blueprint, we recommended that Governor Brown establish an independent, statewide agency or council devoted to compilation, modeling, prediction and presentation of environmental quality data. I want to elaborate on what this agency might look like and why we believe …

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The State of the Union Address: Good on Energy, MIA on Climate

President Obama’s State of the Union address had good news for research universities and for renewable energy: We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people. Already, we are seeing the promise of …

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Obama’s Cost-Benefit Executive Order

Last week, President Obama issued a new executive order on cost-benefit analysis   The order also promised a retrospective review of old rules to weed out the duds.  Business interests were pleased, environmentalists were dismayed. Politically, the new executive order makes perfect sense.  To be reelected and keep control of the Senate, he needs to win …

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The BP Oil Spill and the Disappearing Louisiana Coast

The fact is that even before the BP Oil Spill, the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico itself were under siege from damage to wetlands, a poorly regulated oil and gas industry, rising seas, an immense marine “dead zone,” invasive species, and damaged ecosystems.

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California Environmental Blueprint: Protect and Restore Funding

This post is part of an ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California, released by UCLA Law last week.  I’ll talk about the first–and, in many ways, most fundamental–recommendation in our paper: that Governor Brown do what he can to protect and restore stable, robust funding for our State’s core environmental initiatives. My coauthors and …

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